


Bloodletting

by Beleriandings



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood Magic, F/M, Face-Sitting, Mild Gore, Tails, Weird Power Dynamics, handjobs, headcanoning wildly, i literally have zero excuse for this, not actually as dark as those warnings make it sound, somewhat unhealthy relationships, the Tomb Takers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 13:14:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17264834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: Power would suit him well, Cree thought. Even now, there was a latent force to the way he moved, something that seemed to thrum beneath his skin. He would not be the same, after, but he would be something new, something better. Perfection distilled, bound into flesh and blood and bone.And for her part, she gave thanks every day that she had the chance to be beside him when the time came.





	Bloodletting

“Lucien…” Cree laid a hand on his shoulder, watchful. He was bare from the waist up, his whole body tense as a drawn bow, trembling with effort as he drove the point of the bodkin deep into the palm of his hand. The runes began to glow softly, then brighter, lighting up the whole interior of the covered wagon for a moment as he twisted the point deep within the muscle; from the side she saw his face twitch at the corner of the mouth, but he made no other sign of the pain that this must surely be causing him.

Blood poured from his hand, rolling down the blade as he twisted it and seeping into the etched runes, turning their white glow to an arterial red. Lucien pushed harder, gritting his teeth slightly with the effort, the blood dripping down to fill the small bottle he held to catch it.

When it was full, he pulled back the knife and motioned for Cree. Obediently, she wiped the blood off the side and corked the bottle, sealed it with a muselet of pure platinum, sparkling a soft purple with the enchantment the woman from the capital had placed upon it. She peered at it for a moment; as usual, nothing seemed amiss. Then she scribbled the date and a few shorthand runes on a small parchment label which she strung around the neck of the bottle.

After putting the bottle aside – next to several other, identical bottles, all inscribed in the same way and arranged in a rack – she turned back to Lucien. He was cleaning his knife, and setting it down on the table to look at the cuts on his hand, impassively curious: one on the back of his hand, the first he had bled today, and the newest that he had reopened, on his palm. A little blood ran down his arm from this last, and he wiped it off with fastidious care.

Then he turned to Cree, smiling a little. “Check the seals carefully, please. She said that they must be entirely tight. Otherwise the ritual might not take.”

Cree nodded. “I have been checking them. You know that I do not make such oversights.”

His smile grew wider, reaching his eyes. He extended his other hand to cup her cheek, and she felt a frisson go down her spine, as his fingertips brushed through her whiskers.

He pulled back his hand, and she felt herself twitch almost involuntarily back towards him, feeling the loss of the touch.

There were many such touches between them; it had always been so, ever since she had first come to Lucien’s side. As always, Cree told herself that they meant nothing. They couldn’t mean more; she couldn’t let herself hope they did. Lucien was…Lucien, and his life was to change the course of the world. He would not – should not – waste energy on an assistant like her, an already devoted follower.

After all, Cree would be there at his side forever, or for as long as he would have her; she had decided that long ago.

“Come. Please help me with the last two?” he said, with a small smile, that she could not help but think of as just for her. It was different to the way he smiled when speaking to the rest of them. And it was different to the way he spoke to _her_ ; that stranger. Cree drew what small, secret satisfaction she could from that.

“Of course.” She was already readying another bottle, another wire muselet and paper label as Lucien picked up the bodkin once more. It was the wound on his shoulder blade, next; he couldn’t reach this one, so she would have to do the bloodletting, as she always did. She leaned over to inspect it, looking at how the place had scabbed over since they had done this yesterday, and then the day before, and the day before that, back to when they had begun this. The wound was round and the size of the point of the bodkin, a dark, coagulated red against the soft purple of his bare skin. He shifted a little, watching her as she watched him.

Satisfied with what she saw, Cree nodded, and accepted the bodkin he handed her.

She braced her other paw on his back, hoping to steady him with her touch. As always, he always surprised her with the heat of his skin, compared to her own. Tieflings were naturally warmer than your average person, he had told her with a smile, that first time she had brushed his hand by accident and been surprised by the heat of it. Infernal blood, it seemed, had its advantages, especially in the cold northern winters.

She took a breath to steady her hand and pressed the bodkin’s point into his flesh, twisting so the blood came sluicing down the blade. As the runes began to turn red, she caught the stream of blood expertly within the bottle. When it was full she drew away, and Lucien rolled his shoulders as she repeated the exercise of corking the bottle and setting it aside.

“One more” he said, turning his crimson, pupil-less gaze on her.

She nodded, inspecting the final wound. This one was on his neck; it required extra care, being so close to the carotid artery. Lucien took hold of the bodkin, and she laid her paw over his hand to help guide him to the place. He angled his head to the side to allow their joined hands past the curve of his horn, and, caught in the light of the lamp, the muscles in his neck shifted and rippled beneath smooth lilac skin as he swallowed, marred only by a few older, silver-lilac scars and the newer, darker wound that they were about to reopen.

No, not marred forever, she thought, as together they pushed the bodkin in. These wounds were only temporary, a means to an end. In a few days’ time, if all went right – if the ritual worked as the woman from the capital said – the wounds would be burned away, or rather, crystallised into the brilliant markings of something _new_. Something powerful, something that would change the world as they knew it.

Assuming it worked, she thought for the thousandth time, as the last bottle for today began to fill with blood. She trusted Lucien with her life – with so much more than that besides – but this woman, she didn’t know about. Lucien trusted her, and that should be enough. _Perhaps_ , Cree thought as Lucien breathed out a long hissing sigh that sounded almost like pleasure and made her imagine more than she had any right to, _perhaps_ _it_ _was wrong, petty and jealous, to doubt_. Perhaps she should trust this woman implicitly. Lucien was not one to be played for a fool. And Cree knew that he had his reasons for placing his faith – his very life, in all probability – in her hands, and in her book. There was no reason at all that he had to share those reasons with anyone.

So why was it that every time the two of them were together, Cree felt the fur on her spine rise, an ugly twist of jealousy within her ribcage?

It was wrong of her, she told herself, to think about Lucien so.

But, she thought with regret as she sealed the final bottle, she was not perfect. _She was not like him_. She looked back at Lucien, who was stretching his back, his shoulder blades shifting beneath his skin. There were scars there, from other rituals, and they caught the lamplight in a way that threw their relief into sharp light and shadow. As she watched him, he raised his hand in front of him again, inspecting the wounds there. He twisted his wrist around, making the tendons flicker beneath his skin; she wondered if he was thinking about the wounds turned to brilliant crimson eyes, invulnerable and pinning him into the fabric of the universe, bound to something bigger than him forever. More than a tiefling, more than the mage he was, more than the Empire he had broken away from and anyone who would stand in his way.

Power would suit him well, Cree thought. Even now, there was a latent force to the way he moved, something that seemed to thrum beneath his skin. He would not be the same, after, but he would be something new, something better. Perfection distilled, bound into flesh and blood and bone.

And for her part, she gave thanks every day that she had the chance to be beside him when the time came.

Another trickle of blood was beginning to run down the back of Lucien’s hand to his wrist as he inspected the wound. Cree stepped forward, already moving to get the cloth from the table, but he turned to her, met her eye, and shook his head, all in one fluid, commanding motion. Slowly, maintaining eye contact, he raised the bleeding hand and licked the trickle of blood, drawing his wrist sideways across his mouth so it stained his lips, red and shining wetly against their darker shade of violet.

He licked his lips, and his mouth curled up into a slightly teasing smile, a little smear of blood left over at the corner. Cree’s tail began to twitch. “L-Lucien” she managed, feeling her face heat beneath her fur. She reached out for him. “Let me…”

He nodded, slowly. “Not too much, though. You know the right amount.”

She nodded too, letting the start of the healing spell pool across the pads of her paws. She raised them, laying one on Lucien’s shoulder and the other on his wrist. “Just enough to stop the bleeding” she said, repeating familiar words like a litany as the magic sank into Lucien’s flesh, “not enough to seal the wounds.”

“Otherwise we’ll have to start over.”

She nodded. “Otherwise we’ll have to start over.”

He let out another sigh, as though sinking into a warm bath as the healing took hold. “Exactly, my dear Cree” he said. He laughed, lightly. “This blood I have inside me is not to be wasted, after all. Every drop is precious, if we are to achieve our goals.”

The spell ended, and Cree knew she should let go of him, but something – some traitorous, indulgent part of her heart, made her touch linger on his skin, for a little longer than necessary.

If Lucien noticed, however, he did not acknowledge it. “Thank you” he said, when she finally did let go, to quickly turn her face away to go back to sorting the bottles, rather unnecessarily. And then:

“Cree.”

His voice from behind – and the change in his tone - startled her a little. She turned. “Yes?”

He had picked up the long, dark blue robe he had been wearing, but he paused before dressing again. “There’s something wrong” he said, a slight frown line appearing between his eyes. It was not a question. “It’s…her, isn’t it?”

Cree blinked. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

He sighed, setting aside the bundled robe on the chair for now and taking a step towards her. “You don’t trust her, Cree.”

She swallowed. “I trust your judgment. You know that.”

“That’s not the same.” He reached forward, taking her paws in his own hands. “I need you with me, Cree. You know that, don’t you? You are…indispensable.”

She felt herself suck in her breath, then mentally reprimanded herself. _Like a mere kitten, sighing over her first infatuation. She ought to know better_. “Lu– ah, my Nonagon-” she began.

He held up a finger. “Nonagon in public, if you please. But when it’s just the two of us, Lucien will do. After all, we’ve known each other long enough, haven’t we? We go further back than any of them.”

“…That we do,” she agreed. “And…Lucien, you must understand my…ah, my misgivings about her. It’s not that I don’t believe!” she hastened to add. “I want this as much as you do. I want to see you _soar_ , and become stronger than any. If I believe in anything, I believe in you. But…” she shook her head a little. “I just think we should not put all of our trust in her book, and her ritual. She’s the only one that can read it, or so she says.”

“Her story held up under Zoran’s spell.”

“Yes, what she told of it. We do not know what she might be omitting.”

“True. But it fits with everything we found out in the archive in Rexxentrum. And I believe in calculated risk.” He looked her in the eye, intently. “You must know that, by now.”

“…I do.” She looked over the table. “But Lucien, all that _blood_. I’ve studied this for so long…you’ve seen what I can do with blood. How I can make people hurt, if I choose.”

“You know I’ve always been very impressed with your… skillset. That goes without saying.”

“Well, be that as it may, I still can’t make head nor tail of most of those runes, the ones from the book. I don’t know what the ritual _does_ , and I’m…at the very least, I’m uncomfortable with it, if it’s you that will be at the convergence point when the time comes.”

“Like I said, Cree” he told her, squeezing her hands in his a little. He grinned, showing his rather sharp canines. “Calculated risk.”

“But you can’t possibly make that calculation when you don’t know her true motivations!”

“What makes you think I _don’t_ know her true motivations, even if she doesn’t say them outright under a zone of truth?” he narrowed his eyes, looking her up and down. His voice had a sharp edge, suddenly. “And, for that matter, what in the world makes you think I don’t know yours?” He leaned forward a little, the silence between them like a held breath. “Now, we both know this is about more than runes, and trustworthiness of certain parties. Wouldn’t you agree?”

She opened her mouth, no words coming out. She realised they were still clasping hands between them, but she had unsheathed her claws, quite without noticing. She retracted them again, took a breath. “Lucien, you know I trust you, but I just think you should take seriously the risk that she…”

Her voice died in her throat, as he leaned forward into her space. “I can’t afford to lose you, Cree. Not now.”

He meant it in a purely practical sense, she told herself. Even though he was so close to her, even though his voice had dropped so that he was half-whispering, husky and…well, she wondered if it was masochistic to allow herself to think of it as _wanting_.

She decided it certainly was; she could only be setting herself up for disappointment, thinking that way.

Then again, Lucien had always been one to defy her expectations at every turn.

When he kissed her, his mouth still tasted a little like his own blood. The iron tang of it was quite ordinary, as blood went, but combined with his kiss it was transmuted into something quite overwhelming. Lucien held little back, his arms going around her waist and bearing some of her weight. The kiss was tentative for a brief moment but quickly became heated, messy, with all wrong angles and the clicking together of their teeth. Something about the counterpoint to how Lucien usually was – poised, filled with precise but compressed energy like a coiled spring waiting for his moment – served to enhance the experience, sensation rushing over her. His skin was, as always, a few degrees warmer than her own.

She felt herself purring low in her throat as he kissed along the side of her neck, pushing his face into her fur to reach the sensitive skin of her neck beneath, raking his teeth along it with gentle precision. At the same time, his tail was coming up and winding itself around hers, with surprising gentleness.

She gasped a little, extending her claws and wrapping her arms around his chest as he increased the pace. He let out a guttural curse in Infernal as her claws grazed his skin, and for a moment it was hard to tell whether it was pain or pleasure. But then when she took her hands away he whined in his throat, the most needy and vulnerable sound she had ever heard from him, had hardly dared dream she ever would. And so she immediately brought her claws back, raked them across the skin of his back; not enough to break the skin, but enough to raise red welts that she’d be able to see tomorrow when she helped him once again with the bloodletting. Enough to make him moan into her throat, low against her jugular so she felt the sound as much as heard it.

The sound sent a spike of arousal through her too, and between their bodies she felt a hard bulge at the front of his trousers that told her he felt the same. She arced her neck back and let herself feel satisfaction, suddenly thinking back to those years they had spent together at the Academy, and then after, working together in secret for long hours in the archives, or in her lab in basement storage room, secreted within cloaking spell upon cloaking spell.

How she had ached to touch him, some of those nights, to kiss him and bend him over her desk and make him hers, and yet was all the while becoming resigned to the fact that it was the other way around; in this, as in so many things, she was wholly and entirely his.

Not that she had believed anything would ever happen, back then. He burned so bright, even back then, and even then people had clustered around him like moths to a lamp. He had only plucked her from amongst them and kept her so close all this time for her skill with blood magic, and her ability to keep a secret; she was under no illusion on that front.

But then again, everything about the life they were living now was above and beyond the dreams she had had when she was younger. The situation she was currently in was proof enough of that.

He moved his head up, kissing along her jaw now. His horn raked along the angle of her jawbone, the ridges rough and tactile against her skin, the closely-cropped hair on his scalp like thick velvet, once more pushing through her whiskers; the burst of sensation from that was more even than she was expecting. She let out a little, involuntary sound, and wondered if he knew how sensitive whiskers were. She supposed he had no way of knowing.

Well, she resolved to let him know before this was over: that and much, much more besides.

She drew back with a quiet growl in the back of her throat, pulling his hips towards her. She looked up at him, meeting his eye with new boldness, which he met with that damned smile of his. In retaliation, she cupped his groin through the front of his loose linen trousers, hand going to the bulge there and applying just a little pressure, experimental. He didn’t pull away, though, but merely grinned wider; she had never seen him quite like this before, and suddenly, she wanted all of it, was greedy for more before it was over. She certainly got the sense that it would be, and soon. For some reason, this moment felt suspended out of time, just the two of them in the wagon together after dark. Between here and there, in the held-breath waiting time between now and the day when they – or rather, when Lucien, or rather, when _Nonagon_ – would change the world forever.

And so, she reasoned, if she was being given what she wanted, then she would reach out and take it.

She undid the buttons, slipping her hand below the waist line of his trousers, down until she reached his cock. He was mostly hard, and his breath fluttered audibly when she took hold of him. Her head was laid against his chest, now, like a furnace against her cheek, and she could hear the beat of his heart right next to her ear.

Every gasp, every sound she managed to wring from him, she felt that she must treasure, store away for the future. But now, with her hand working him, there would be no shortage.

She held him through the tremors as he came, his horns raking past her shoulder once more as he dropped his head, his hand grasping her upper arm as though for balance. It was really very endearing, she thought, a rush of unexpected – _something_ , but she didn’t want to stretch so far as to call it tenderness - filling her chest. He looked into her face, breath hitching as he recovered his balance, leaning on the chair, then slipping down to the floor. “Well, Cree” he said. “I always knew you were extremely… multitalented.” By now his face and chest had flushed a deep purple edging towards fuchsia. _Fascinating_. She had never seen that before. He pulled her down beside him, so they were sitting side by side on the floor. She wiped her hand on the bloody cloth still hanging over the side of the table. “Now, I hope you will let me return the favour?”

* * *

A little later she sat astride him, pinning him to the rough matting with his robe laid on top of it. She leaned forward to pin down his wrists with splayed paws, using her tail to wrap around his to stop it lashing. It was an awkward position, but not one she was going to pretend she hadn’t endlessly imagined variations of, all those long nights in Rexxentrum when Lucien fell asleep in the chair, or on the road together surrounded by others and frustrated, having to hide in the shadows of everywhere they passed through.

The time for hiding was nearly over, Cree thought as she ground down against him. Hadn’t they earned their freedom? Hadn’t they earned this power? All that was left was for Lucien to reach out and take it.

But right now, in this moment, he was hers for the taking.

“Cree.” He motioned with his chin, an upwards lilt, and a side-long smile because it was all he could manage whilst pinned. “Come up here.” He licked his lips just a little, as he had done before.

She couldn’t help her eyes widening hungrily as she caught his meaning. Slowly, hesitantly, she sat up – still unable to not bow to his every wish, even now, while holding him down – and shuffled forward so that she was near astride his face, arms still pinned above his head.

His lips and tongue on her were like a shock through her whole body; dimly, she wondered where he had learned this, who else there had been. Lucien was always meticulously discreet with his private life, even to those close to him. Everything compartmentalised. He was good at that. But there were always, always rumours about him, swirling around the capital.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to suppress the nascent jealousy, letting herself feel only, in that moment. To let herself come apart for him; an inevitability, really, she thought. Creatures of blood and bone they were – whatever else Lucien soon would be - and didn’t she know well enough the sway that could be cast over the body?

Did she not know exactly what it took to make the blood _sing_?

* * *

Afterwards, she sat in the folding chair flicking her tail from side to side and watching Lucien dress. He pulled on his trousers and his robe, looking remarkably unruffled – at least compared to how Cree felt – and buttoned it neatly up to the collar, then adjusted the fall of the fabric over his body and buckled his belt. He went to lean against the chair to put his boots back on, but before he could, Cree extended her hand and she caught his instead, feeling the warmth of him, ever surprising.

“There now” he said, a smile quirking up the corner of his mouth. “Do you see it yet? Do you see how important you are to me? I would never forget you, Cree.”

She was too overwhelmed to think of anything very intelligent to say. “Do you promise?” she purred, unable to keep the smile off her face.

“Of course” he said. “I mean, things might change. I might die.” He smiled at the way her mouth turned down at that. “I mean, I do not plan on it, but anything may happen. The earth might open up and suck us in, at any moment. But we get along, you and me. Don’t we?”

“…Yes” she sighed. “Yes, Lucien, we do.”

His eyes met hers: as they did, a whole tide of words rose up within her and then almost at the same time almost died on her tongue. Words that she’d been keeping so close to her heart that even she didn’t know them to be true, until this exact moment.

But he was just looking down at her like he always did, as his friend and co-conspirator and his trusted confidante; aside from her memory of what had just happened and the contented, wrung-out feeling in her body, it might have been any other day. The two of them had been together a long time, after all.

She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t spring such a thing on him, not so soon before what must be done, in just a few short days. Whatever this had been to him, she knew in that moment, it hadn’t been the same as it was to her.

Because the thing was, he wasn’t just Lucien, anymore. Not the Lucien she had known, or not wholly at least. He was Nonagon, now, and that was someone different, someone who was not hers, _could_ not be hers. He was to be the whole world’s, if all went as planned.

And she knew she had no choice but to be all right with that.

His eyes whispered secrets kept, as he met her gaze. He didn’t even need to speak, to warn her not to tell anyone about this. And she wouldn’t, she knew; she would keep this secret, guard it closely and jealously, cling to it when she stood by and watched him undergo the ritual. And then afterwards, she would be by his side for as long as he wanted her there.

Her love for him seemed like a pale thing in comparison, a lesser commitment of the kind that ordinary people made.

Lucien gave her one last nod, raising up her hand and kissing it, assumed formality tempered by a slightly playful grin. “Until tomorrow, then.”

She nodded. “Until tomorrow.”

And with that he swept down the steps of the wagon until the hem of his robe vanished from view through the flap, leaving her alone with a rack of bottles of his blood, and a heart heavy with something that had not been there before. Or perhaps it had, she thought, and it was just different now, like a crack that she hadn’t noticed before that she now could not help but trip on.

It was certainly a matter for further analysis, she thought, beginning to sort out the bottles of blood into their correct order.

**Author's Note:**

> Since we don't know that much about Lucien and what his deal actually was (or actually anything much about his personality) I made up a lot of this out of basically nothing, but I hope you enjoyed me indulging some headcanons I've had ever since writing [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16258967).


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